Brooklyn Tech to Split Graduation Ceremony

Brooklyn Tech’s overflowing senior classes have barely fit into the school’s auditorium for graduation in recent years, but the school has finally reached a breaking point. 

For the first time in Brooklyn Tech’s history, they will hold a split graduation ceremony for this year’s senior class. The ceremonies will be split by majors, with Engineering, Arts and Social Studies majors in the morning, and Science and Math majors in the afternoon.

“We want the split to be equal and for the graduation ceremonies to be as similar as possible in order to make this fair for the students,” said Joseph Kaelin, Coordinator of Student Activities. 

Seating capacity for Brooklyn Tech’s auditorium is 2,900. With 1,136 students in this year’s graduating class, giving tickets to each student and their parents would result in going 500 seats beyond capacity.

“We had a lot of families who were upset when we only gave away two tickets for each family last year, so going down to one just wasn’t an option,” said Kaelin.

With Brooklyn Tech’s auditorium already among the largest in the city, Kaelin said they considered multiple options including having the ceremony in a tent outdoors, and sharing a space for the day with two other schools in order to minimize renting costs.

Some of the venues which were considered include the Jacob Javitts Center and Radio City Music Hall.

“The problem with renting venues of that size is that you have to take the space for the entire day,” said Kaelin. “Ultimately, the cost of renting that space is split among all of the families in the graduating class, so we have to find schools who are willing to share it with us in order to make the ceremony as inexpensive as possible.”

Kaelin said that the split ceremony will come with some benefits for students. For the first time in the school’s history, the names of students will be announced and they will be able to come up on stage to receive their diploma.

“It’s just not realistic to call over 1,000 names because the ceremony would take an extremely long time,” said Kaelin. “We’ve never been able to do this at a ceremony before, so it’s exciting for us.”

Surprisingly, many of the seniors were understanding of the school’s dilemma.

“I think it’s beneficial to split the ceremony, because it means that it will run shorter and both of my parents can come,” said senior Syed Asghari. “Ultimately, your actual diploma is mailed to your home, so you’re just walking on stage to get a fake one.”

Brooklyn Tech’s graduation ceremony is scheduled for June 27.